Month: November 2002

She thinks Coleman won. Money quote: “The entire debate will come down to a handful of sound bites on the news in Minnesota tonight. I think the impression voters will come away with is this: Shaky and irritable old lion tries to cuff rising young tiger; young tiger respectfully stands his ground without resorting to viciousness.”

Dick Morris thinks they’re going to do well in the Senate. Given Morris’ track record in Congressional predictions, this is not a good sign for Tom Daschle.

USA Today gets exactly the same result as the New York Times in their latest Congressional generic poll – a sudden shift toward the Republicans. The difference is: USA Today’s editors aren’t so biased as to bury their story.

U.S. News’ John Leo sees the issue behind the sniper profiling. And he adds something I’d missed:

Even after John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were identified, the New York Times said authorities were exploring their possible connection to “skinhead militias.” (This was deleted after the early editions of October 24, perhaps when some alert Times editor figured out that black men are not likely to join skinhead groups.)

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I do not like fundamentalism of any kind. Let us find a way to resist and fight fundamentalism that leads to violence – fundamentalism of all kinds, in al-Qaeda and within our own government. Our resistance to this war should be our resistance to profit at the cost of human life because that is what these drums beating over Iraq are really all about.” – Tim Robbins, speaking at an anti-war rally in Boston.

RAINES AWARD NOMINEE: “North Korea, in a series of statements issued to the New York Times, last week said it was open to negotiation with the US. Ambassador Han Song-ryol told the newspaper North Korea was willing to shut down the alleged enriched uranium programme and to allow international inspections of its uranium facilities. ‘There must be a continuing dialogue. If both sides sit together, the matter can be resolved peacefully and quickly,’ he said.” – BBC News again. Wouldn’t Orwell be amused by a totalitarian willingness to shut down an alleged uranium program? More forgiving of totalitarianism than the North Koreans – that’s our BBC! (By the way, a reader points out that in the BBC’s other Raines Award nomination today, there was another error. The alleged “massacre” at Jenin took place in April, not March. March was the month when over 120 Israelis were killed in suicide attacks.)

MORONIC CONVERGENCE: Streisand signs on to the Ted Rall conspiracy theory about Paul Wellstone.

BROKEN LINK: Here’s the perfect Christmas prezzie for your homophobic uncle.

This is crunch week – and I’m not talking about the elections. At some point very soon, the administration is going to have to make a hard decision about the U.N. Do we keep talking even as Chirac subtly but powerfully undermines international security for the sake of France’s Great Power aspirations and lots of lucre? Or do we force a resolution, even if it’s one we don’t want. I say: stop letting the French drag us around by our noses. France’s delaying tactics, as Bob Kagan pointed out yesterday, have now gone beyond a diplomatic dance. They are designed to achieve one thing: a reprieve for Saddam and a humiliation of the United States. That’s why it’s past time we put an end to them. Besides, if we go on like this much longer, the delay will be fatal. I’ve long believed that some kind of U.N. mandate would be very helpful in waging what will be a difficult and unpredictable war and occupation. I even think that inspectors aren’t completely useless, as long as they are genuinely allowed to operate without conditions and we can interrogate Iraqi scientists outside the country and give their families amnesty to protect them. Perhaps we’ll have such inspections at the same time as the U.S. and the allies prepare for invasion: the best of both worlds. But it seems vitally important to me not to give Saddam another year for weak inspections, and then plan on war in 2004. In that scenario, we seem weak; we lose momentum; we invite a counter-attack; and Saddam has even more time to play defense shrewdly and well. The Iraqi dictator knows the game. He even knows that his best friends in maintaining his brutal rule are the anti-war members of Anglo-American left and far right. And he understands that time is on his side. We need to reverse that equation soon – or more lives will be lost to the dictates of the terrorists.

THE MORE WE KNOW: The big, unsettling, unavoidable issue of the next few decades is going to be how we reconcile what we want to be true with what science ineluctably shows us. At some point, we will know much, much more about the complex biology of sexual difference, for example, which is bound to have a huge impact on the debate about sexual equality and/or equivalence. And we’ll find out about the biological and genetic components of intelligence, in ways that will undermine notions about educational policy and technique and the roots of social inequality. And then we will simply have the emotional impact of seeing images such as these, which show what it is we abort. Given what we’ve found out in the last decade from science, it seems to me inevitable that our current notions on a whole range of issues will require radical re-thinking. The question is simply whether our culture will be open-minded and, in the best sense, liberal enough to rethink at all.

HEAVEN: A new New York Times poll. These are always great articles because you actually get to see the editors wrestling with real data. Sometimes the data actually conflicts with the editors’ left-liberal beliefs (even though they’ve done their best to avoid that by loading the questions). So the Rainester either a) ignores the data; b) invents the data; or c) spins the data. Sunday’s poll seems to be a case of a) and c). I agree with Mickey that the headline and lede are almost laughably Rainesian. There are two statistics that leap out from the poll: the Republicans are reported to have a 47 – 40 percent lead in the generic Congressional question, with a margin of error of 5 points. That’s much bigger than anything I’ve seen elsewhere (and I’m not sure I believe it). When you read the actual poll results, you find an even more striking story: in the first week of October, the generic question led to 43 percent Republican – 46 percent Democratic split. So a 3-point Democratic lead has reversed into a 7 point Republican lead in a month. That’s big news to me. But it’s buried. Why? Wouldn’t that be a racier headline than a Lehrer-esque thumbsucker about everyone being worried about everything and no-one really loving either party? The Times writers even seem to recognize this aspect of the bleeding obvious. Never fear, dear reader:

[T]hat question, known as a generic ballot question, is a measure of national sentiment, and does not necessarily reflect how Americans will vote in the governor’s races around the country and in the handful of close Senate and House races that will ultimately determine the control of Congress.

Phew, says the confused Times reader. And that’s true as far as it goes. But doesn’t a sudden big lead by one party after a neck-and-neck race for months tell you something?

ONE MORE THING: Here’s a hilarious “Times-ism” from the poll story. It’s the headline: “In Poll, Americans Say Both Parties Lack Clear Vision”. For the sake of argument, lets say that a sudden lead by Republicans in the Times generic Congressional poll isn’t that interesting. What’s the actual evidence for the actual headline? The question asked was “Do the Republicans/Democrats have a clear plan for the country if they regain the Congress?” In the case of Republicans, 42 percent said yes, with 39 percent saying no. In the case of Democrats, 31 percent said yes, and almost half said no. So one party has a net positive rating of 3 and one has a net negative rating of 18. Would that lead you to infer that both parties are equally panned? Call me crazy, but if you were looking at this poll and asking genuine, open questions, wouldn’t you infer that a) the Republicans seem to have jumped ahead and b) there’s a clear gap between GOP and Dems on whether they’ve made a clear case or not? Don’t get me wrong: I’m not sure I buy this poll. But that’s irrelevant. Polls can sometimes be wrong; sometimes right. But the spin endures.

RAINES AWARD NOMINEE: “In March, 2002, General Mofaz sent thousands of troops into the West Bank, repeating the exercise three months later after a spate of deadly suicide attacks by Palestinian militants. As chief-of-staff, General Mofaz directed some of Israel’s most controversial military operations. These included: The March 2002 assault on Jenin, where Palestinians claim a massacre took place – though UN officials later denied this.” – BBC News, in an article on the new Israeli Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz. Check out the classic avoidance of journalism. Did the “massacre” take place? No reputable authority says it did; even the U.N. denies it happened. So why the absurd formulation? Except, er, as pure pandering.

GAY AWAY: You have a homophobic uncle? Here’s the perfect Christmas present. (SORRY: Somehow, I left the link off this last night.)

THE McAULIFFE PARTY: Two polls from Minnesota show clear anti-Dem backlash in Minnesota. The most encouraging poll for Mondale, in the Star-Tribune, gives him a 5 point edge. But that very poll has some disturbing news as well:

Poll results show the backlash from the service, which was broadcast live on radio and TV, may make its mark on the election’s outcome. Nearly a quarter of the 929 likely voters said the service made them more likely to
vote for Coleman, while 16 percent said it made them more likely to vote for Mondale. An additional 53 percent said the service will make no difference in how they vote.

For a quarter of the voters to be swayed this way is big news in a very tight race. The St Paul Pioneer-Press and Minnesota Public Radio poll shows a Coleman lead of 6 points. The rally, it seems, wasn’t only gross; it was dumb. I can’t think of two better adjectives for the sleazeball now running the Democrats, Terry McAuliffe. With this race, he may finally have done himself in. Which in the long term, paradoxically enough, is bad for Bush.

“Orwell always described himself as a socialist, never as a liberal. He disliked the Tory Party and the class system and the empire. His rationalism has been described (by me) as “Protestant Atheism”. That is, he had a great respect for scripture and for the hymnal, and employed their images and rhythms in his own prose. His favorite line of justification was a line from John Milton – “By the known rules of ancient liberty..” This expressed the conviction that there was a common and innate understanding of freedom, which would outlive all ideologies.” – the conversation about Orwell concludes on the Book Club Page. Thanks for all your emails. Next Friday, Hichens and I will be reprising our C-SPAN duet, live in D.C., from 8 – 10 am, ET.

Charles Krauthammer sends exactly the right signal to the president.

James Lileks, as usual, has the ex-veep’s number.

GOOD FOR BARNEY: Congressman Frank criticizes another Democrat. The Stonewall Democrats’ Chad Johnson also does the honorable thing. But then Johnson (an old friend) is an honorable guy.

THANKS: Last month was our biggest ever. We broke through the 1 million visit mark easily – with 1.13 million visits from 273,000 unique visitors.

Brad DeLong, with whom I often disagree but who’s invariably worth reading, points out some interesting data in the latest economic report. Bottom line:

Take the 7.6% [productivity] growth rate of the last quarter of 2001, the 8.3% growth rate of the first quarter of 2002, the 1.7% growth rate of the second quarter, and now the third quarter’s 4.0%, and realize that over the past four quarters America’s measured economic productivity has grown by 5.4%. This is an amazing performance for a time over which total hours worked have been falling.

As readers know, I’m no trained economist, but it strikes me that the huge productivity gains of recent times are extremely good news for all of us. There was much in the boom that was dumb, much in the bubble that was ludicrous, but much underneath that may one day be seen as a big leap forward for the American economy.

HITCHENS ON REGRETS: “I think that regret is for those you didn’t sleep with, while remorse is for those with whom you did. There are some past battles where I wish I had done more for the cause, and very few moments over which I feel embarrassment. (I was fifty-two, since you ask, on 11 September 2001.) It was a clarifying day all right, but the thing began for me on 14 February 1989, when Khomeini issued his “fatwah” against Salman Rushdie. I have been denouncing “under-reaction” to Islamic theocratic violence ever since, and it begins to look like steady work.” – more reader and Hitchens to-and-fro on the Book Club Page.

THE GOODS ON LAW: Did he once tell this guy to keep quiet about sexual abuse? At this point, you can’t rule it out. Can anyone tell me why Cardinal Law hasn’t resigned yet?

THE GOODS ON THE FBI: Heather Mac Donald examines how the Clinton administration kept the FBI ham-strung in the run-up to 9/11.

SIMON PANDERS: Yep, it’s not just the Dems that gay-bait, of course. The hopeless Republican candidate in California has been trying to use anti-gay themes in his outreach to Latinos. Isn’t this exactly what’s wrong with the Republican Party? There’s a whole new constituency out there to woo and win, i.e. Hispanics. So why do you have to scapegoat and smear another group to do it? Got nothing else to say?

WELLSTONE ON GAYS: Not what you might have imagined. Wellstone eagerly voted for the “Defense of Marriage Act,” sponsored by the religious right and signed by Bill Clinton. The Judd Brothers have more, including a particularly brutal piece about Wellstone’s alleged attitude toward gays in something called ‘The Progressive Review.” First time I knew of this. I guess none of Wellstone’s radical supporters would bring it up, would they?